#Airdrop

Hailed by some as the “Largest Guerrilla Stunt Ever,” Red Bull and Archrival team up to give students wings when they need it most on campus.

In it’s debut, Red Bull AirDrop gave students the energy they needed to survive finals week. In one epic night, we helicoptered (or at least it so appeared) crates of Red Bull cans to over 500 campuses in 55 countries on 6 continents. From America to South Africa, Japan to Egypt, Australia to France, students woke up to a mysterious crate that lit up their social feeds telling them to get down here now!

To help seed the excitement, we sent influencers on campus a package with the heads up that something big was coming. They would become the heroes to tell everyone.

With so much hype surrounding our global drop, we did it again only in the U.S. the following year with an added twist: cameras! Hitting 120 campuses, crates were rigged with GoPros so that the experience could be watched online. Turns out watching somebody have a surprising moment of discovery is good theatre, as thousands of students logged on to witness.

The next year AirDrop took to Spring Break, seeding key destinations with a new fun Yellow flavor. This time the cans were brought over the ocean in ice, directly to waking students in need of energy for the day. Red Bull owned the moment, garnering thousands of social posts and winning new fans.

Perhaps our favorite execution occurred at Arizona State University. For Back to School, we set up a locked metal crate in a key location and challenged students to figure out how to unlock it. On the crate was a large digital number that read 1000… students had to deduce that every time they used the hashtag “#AirDrop” the counter clicked down one. After a thousand tweets, the box opened and gave a thousand students a thousand cans.

Students swarmed the open box, turning shirts into makeshift pouches to carry as many cans as possible. Everyone got in on the action, with Sun Devil students sharing with classmates who weren't close to the AirDrop case because of the large crowd.

The activation is going down as one of the brand’s best stunts ever, garnering incredible earned media and social buzz among our key consumers. The best part? It's not over yet.